black
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Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.

Duke Ellington

If you have a great band with a mediocre drummer, you have a mediocre band. If you have a mediocre band with a great drummer, you have a great band!
DUKE ELLINGTON

Greatness Mediocre Musician Yourself
I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline!
DUKE ELLINGTON

Limitation Myself Time
Of the One O’Clock Lab Band after hearing their performance, and sitting in with them at the White House: “I wish it were mine”.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Hear Myself Performance
There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Goodness Kind Music
The Europeans who went to Africa came back with “modern’ art. What is more African than a Picasso?
DUKE ELLINGTON

Art Creativity Modern
Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brainwaves in his head, and his in mine.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Bond Friendship Myself Right
Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It’s not an occupation or profession, it’s a compulsion.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Live Music Myself Occupation Profession
You have to stop listening in categories. The music is either good or it’s bad.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Bad Category Goodness Listening Stop
Dancing is very important to people who play music with a beat. I think that people who don’t dance, or who never did dance, don’t really understand the beat. I know musicians who don’t and never did dance, and they have difficulty communicating.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Communication Dance Important Myself People
I don’t believe in categories of any kind, and when you speak of problems between blacks and whites in the U.S.A. you are referring to categories again.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Believe Black Kind White Yourself
On becoming more acquainted with the word of the Bible, I began to understand so much more of what I had been taught, and of what I had learned about life and about the people in mine.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Beginning Learning People Teaching Understand Word
Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Freedom Goodness Measurement
The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Knowledge Master Musician
There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good it’s successful; if it doesn’t it has failed.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Failure Kind Music Result Success
I fluffed off the guy who kept requesting tunes all night, then found out he was the King’s son.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Finding Himself Man Request
People do not retire. They are retired by others.
DUKE ELLINGTON

People Retirement

Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.

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Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.

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Popular Authors

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